The Fated Sky characters

Also known as the Lady Astronaut

Appears from the start

Several years into her career, Elma is an established astronaut flying the runs between Earth, the orbital station and the Moon, and still the most recognizable public figure the space program has. She is a formidable mathematician and pilot who now manages her anxiety with therapy and medication rather than by concealing it, and she remains married to Nathaniel York, the coalition's lead engineer, who is not going anywhere.

Appears from the start

Elma's husband and the space coalition's lead engineer, who designs the missions she flies. Their marriage is steady and equal, which is exactly what makes the prospect of a multi-year expedition a genuinely hard question rather than a simple one.

First appears in chapter 3

The coalition's most famous astronaut and the senior figure in its corps, a public hero with a long and hostile history with Elma reaching back to the war. He is a genuinely excellent pilot and an effective political operator inside the program, and his authority over crew assignments makes him impossible to go around.

First appears in chapter 4

The director of the coalition's Kansas headquarters, still weighing every decision about the program against public opinion and funding, and increasingly conscious that the political ground under human spaceflight is shifting.

First appears in chapter 6

A computer and astronaut, Taiwanese, and Elma's closest friend in the corps. Precise, dry and practical, she is one of the very few people with whom Elma is entirely herself.

First appears in chapter 8

A Black astronaut in the coalition's corps, admitted only after the selection rules were forced open. He is a steady colleague of Elma's and one of the people most directly affected by the program's calculations about who it wants the public to see representing humanity.

First appears in chapter 12

The expedition's flight surgeon, a Brazilian doctor with complete authority over the crew's medical fitness. She is exacting and unsentimental, and her interest in Elma's psychiatric history and her prescriptions is professional rather than sympathetic, which makes her one of the few people aboard Elma cannot simply out-argue.

First appears in chapter 14

A white South African astronaut assigned to the expedition, who brings his country's racial order aboard with him and does not moderate it for the crew he will be sealed in with for three years. His presence forces the expedition's Black crew members into constant, exhausting management of a conflict none of them chose.